


don't get too near (for there's lions, beware)

by orphan_account



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Getting Together, M/M, Malia Lives, Steve Has Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 06:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13071387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Everything's the same except Steve is a shifter who turns into a jaguar. Danny wants to know how this became his life. | Canon divergent from the opening of the S2 finale.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from jidenna's 'bambi', because um, /hello/
> 
> so initially this was just a cracky idea, but then it got semi-serious, because i am nothing if not a slut for angst. i did very minimal research on like, everything in this fic, because it was just supposed to be a bit of fun! anywho, enjoy, because i certainly did.

Danny’s woken up by Grace screaming. He falls out of bed, scrambling for his gun, and bursts into Grace’s room in about five seconds flat. She’s pressed up against her headboard, eyes wide. She points a shaking finger at her window—or more specifically, the thing under the window. Danny levels his gun at, his heart pounding a mile a minute, because the thing is a _fucking_ _panther_. 

A panther. 

In Hawaii. 

_Why_. 

“Don’t move, monkey,” Danny hisses, trying his very best to sound like he’s not freaking out when he absolutely is.

Grace just makes a high-pitched whispered shrieking sound from between her teeth in response like _of course I’m not gonna move, what do you take me for?_

The cat’s ears twitch toward her. Danny flicks the safety off on his gun and all its attention turns back to him, which is better but still terrifying. The giant cat with the huge teeth and the sharp claws is staring at him like it’s trying to figure out if it can eat him in one bite or not, its tail swishing back and forth. Its eyes are greenish-blue. 

And then, very slowly, it lowers itself onto its belly. Danny’s finger doesn’t twitch on the trigger, because he never shoots without meaning to, but he comes _damn_ _well_ _close_ to it. He’s seen that move, ok, he’s watched a million cat videos, that is the universal _pounce_ move. 

The panther doesn’t pounce. It rolls, in a weird controlled fall, onto its back, and closes its eyes. 

Danny thinks, hysterically, that not only is there a panther in his daughter’s bedroom but that it is apparently _suicidal_. 

He doesn’t know what to do. Presumably the animal has escaped from the zoo or something, and it’s not, as of yet, an active threat, so he can't just _shoot it_ point blank. But also, it’s a huge and carnivorous wild animal and either it’ll kill him or kill Grace or kill both of them. 

It’s not like he’s got a _tranquilizer_ on him.

He wishes Steve were here. 

“DON’T SHOOT.”

Danny jumps, the cat opens its eyes, and Joe— _Joe White_ —vaults through Grace’s torn window screen and crouches in front of the panther, arms spread wide to shield it. Danny can’t even muster up a response to this. It occurs to him that he’s dreaming. 

“It’s Steve,” says Joe, nonsensically. “The jaguar is Steve. Don’t shoot him. He’s not gonna hurt anyone.”

The panther _—jaguar,_ whatever— rolls back to it’s feet, lifts its paw, and places it gently on Joe’s shoulder. It looks at Danny, cocks it head, and chirps. 

“What the fuck,” says Danny, strangled. 

“Language, Danno,” says Grace, equally strangled. 

“Look,” says Joe, and _cuddles the jaguar._

The jaguar accepts this with a long-suffering sort of whuffle of a breath for exactly three Mississipis, then shimmies out of Joe’s hold, flicks him in the face with its tail, and stalks over to Danny. 

“Don’t shoot,” says Joe again. 

The jaguar butts its head against Danny’s bad knee, curls around his feet, and closes its eyes like it’s gonna nap, right there, no biggie. 

Danny bites his tongue hard. It hurts but that doesn’t mean shit. He’s had dreams before where things hurt and keep hurting after he's woken up. 

“You’ve got about five seconds,” says Danny, to Joe, not the jaguar, “To explain why there is a _jaguar_  in my _house_ on my _feet,_ or I will start shooting and you will be the second thing going down.”

Joe nods, stands. “Right,” he says, “Steve told you he was heading off to Japan, right? Do you know why?”

The jaguar has gone very stiff, is growling sub-vocally, which is doing nothing to lessen Danny’s terror. 

“Yes, yes, I know, to see Shelburne, what does _that_ have to do with _this_?”

“Shelburne is Doris,” says Joe. 

The jaguar curls into a tighter ball, knocking him off balance. Danny sways, grabs the door with his free hand to avoid falling on top of the furry killing machine. 

“Who’s Doris?” 

“Doris McGarrett.”

“...She’s not dead,” says Danny, after a second. When Joe shakes his head, Danny says, “Right, ok, of course not. She, what, she faked her death? Left her kids? Her husband? All these years. And you _knew_.” Danny, who cannot physically become anymore scared then he already is, finds his fear is turning into anger, which is preferable to pissing his pants. “And Steve _didn’t_ shoot you in the face?” 

“He turned into the jaguar,” is what Joe says, the _instead_ unspoken but loud and clear between them. 

_Right_ , thinks Danny, _so you’re fucking nuts._ He doesn’t say it; you don’t call crazy people crazy, ‘cause that’s both rude and also likely to make said crazy person do something, well, crazy. Like sic their pet jaguar on you.

“Ok,” says Danny, with admirable steadiness, “Is the jaguar gonna kill or otherwise maim us?”

The jaguar makes an affronted sound and noses at Danny’s thigh. 

“No,” says Joe in the tone of a man who is utterly certain of what he’s saying, and it would be reassuring if that same man didn’t believe the jaguar was _Steve_ , _a_ _human_ _being_. 

“Can you get it off me then?” 

Joe looks sternly at the jaguar. “You’re scaring your buddy there,” he says, “Think you can let him go, Steve?”

The jaguar’s ears flatten against its head and it snarls, which makes Grace start whimpering. 

Danny loses it. 

“Off!” he yells, because he has _had enough_. “Off, off, _get off of me_.”

He swats the jaguar on the nose and it scrambles away, hackles raised, but Danny doesn’t give a single fuck. He strides to Grace, scoops her into his arms even though she’s too big to be holding like this—Grace winds her arms around his neck, he can feel exactly how fast her heart’s beating, and it _infuriates_ him. The jaguar and Joe are both watching him. The jaguar’s not growling anymore, is hunched down on itself like Danny's dog used to when anyone yelled at it, and Joe is smiling like he’s fucking _amused_ by this whole circus act. Danny trains his gun on the both of them and backs out of the room, out of the house, pausing only to grab his keys awkwardly with the hand holding Grace against him. He bundles himself and Grace into his car, locks them into it, and calls Chin. 

“Hey brah,” says Chin cheerfully, considering that it’s six am on a Saturday. 

“Joe White is in my house with a jaguar he thinks is Steve,” says Danny. 

“Ah,” says Chin, “About that.”

“What.”

“So the McGarretts are shifters. Steve turns into a jaguar.”

_“What.”_

“Yeah, he was a jaguar for three weeks after his mom died. I only found out because he shifted in my car when we got the news about the car accident—uh, bombing. I think Mary’s a serval? They get it from their mom's side of the family.”

Danny hangs up on him. 

“Danno,” says Grace. Some of the colour has come back into her face. “Is he telling the truth?”

Before Danny can answer, Chin calls back. “I’ve got video proof if you want it.”

“Yeah, ok, that’d be good,” says Danny.

* * *

Chin answers the door in a pair of board shorts and a t-shirt, his hair brushed and everything, looking freakishly put together and relaxed and basically the complete opposite of Danny, who is still in his pyjama boxers and t-shirt. “Hey there,” he says to Grace, “You have breakfast yet?”

“No,” Danny snaps, “On account of the jungle cat that broke into her room.”

Chin flicks him an insufferably amused look. “Right. I got Cap’n Crunch, that ok?”

“Yes, thank you,” says Grace, because she's polite.

Once she’s eating her bowl of diabetes and pretending not to be eavesdropping on them, Chin hands Danny his tablet and taps play on the video already loaded up for him.

In it, a jaguar ( _the_ jaguar) is lounging on a bed in a room Danny recognizes as Steve’s, except it’s covered in clothes and posters. The video quality is kinda crap, and keeps shifting, half blocked by a wall. Chin obviously hadn’t wanted to get caught recording this.  

A young Mary is sitting across from the cat, yelling at it. “You’re not the only one upset! _God_ , you’re supposed to be my big brother, you’re supposed to be looking out for me. You missed her funeral, Steve, you let me go to it all alone with _Dad_ , you _suck_. Please—," her voice breaks, she swipes at her face angrily. “ _Please_ , can you come back? Dad’s sending us away, he’s making us _go_ , and I don’t want—I don’t wanna say goodbye to a friggin' _cat_.”

The jaguar growls, shudders, and blurs until Danny’s looking at a young naked Steve, who has ears that stick out a little but the same broad shoulders and tortured frown that Danny's familiar with. 

“Sorry,” he says, hoarsely, and hugs her.

The video cuts off.

Danny looks up at Chin, who’s watching him closely, sympathy all over his face. 

“It’s really Steve?” Danny asks, just to make double extra sure.

“It’s really Steve,” says Chin.

Danny covers his face with shaking hands and Chin squeezes his shoulder. “I gotta—I gotta go back,” says Danny, with dawning certainty. “Fuck me. Fuck him. _Fuck_ _Joe fucking White.”_

“Language, Danno,” says Grace solemnly.

“Remind me I owe you twenty bucks and don’t tell your mom about this. Actually, scratch that, don’t tell _anyone_ about _any_ of this.”

“K,” says Grace.

Danny leaves her with Chin, drives back home in a sort of hyper-focused daze, which means he drives very carefully but doesn’t remember any of it. His house doesn't _look_ like it contains a wild jungle cat that is also his partner and friend, which helps him walk in, because he can pretend nothing absolutely insane is waiting for him. 

Joe is sitting on the couch in the living room, drinking a cup of Danny’s coffee.

“Good, you’re back,” he says.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” says Danny.

“That’s fair. Steve’s in your bedroom. He’s not really happy with me right now.”

“Jeez, I wonder why. I thought I told you to _go.”_

Joe leaves. 

Danny goes to his room.

Steve is under his bed.

“Hey,” says Danny, “Come on out babe.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case there's any confusion, literally nothing happens the way it happened in the s2 finale _except_ Joe telling Steve he'll take him to Japan to meet Shelburne. i will make this clear in the next few chapters, bear with me.

Steve the jaguar doesn’t want to come out from under the bed. 

It very nearly tests Danny’s limitless (ok, ok, _severely limited_ patience) but he rallies. After all, the guy just found out his mother was not actually dead, that the case surrounding her death, which had resulted in his father’s murder, had basically been a waste of investigative time, and that the years-long separation between Mary, Steve, and John had been, if not totally unwarranted, then at least _less_ warranted. 

So Danny breathes in through his nose and says, slowly, “Ok buddy, you stay under there as long as you want. I’m just gonna go shower and change, because even though it's really early, thanks to you and your _shenanigans_ , I don’t think I can go back to sleep with this much adrenaline pumping through me.”

Steve doesn’t reply—in cat noises or otherwise. 

Danny heads for the shower, remembering to detour last minute for clothes and a towel. Steve may be a cat, but he’s still _Steve;_  Danny can’t walk around naked in front of him like he’s _really_ an animal that doesn’t care or understand about nudity. 

The thought makes Danny snort. 

_Steve_ , caring about _nakedness_. With the way he rips his shirt off at the slightest opportunity? _Please_. 

Still, Danny’s got standards. 

He showers quickly, vaguely anxious about leaving jaguar!Steve alone. He doesn’t, after all, know what being a shifter _means_. How much of Steve is still Steve, internally? He recognized Danny and Grace and Joe, but was that instinct or memory? And sure, in hindsight, he seemed to understand what they’d all been saying, but...well, did he, really? Or was it just _tones?_ Dogs understood tones if not the words themselves. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have kicked Joe out without getting some answers. 

Maybe he should’ve asked Chin more questions. 

Danny sighs at himself as he presses the water out of his hair with a towel. He’s not in top form today, but then again, who can blame him? Until now, he’d been under the impression that people were people and animals were animals, and never the twain shall meet, except in really sick cases or as metaphors. 

Steve’s still under the bed. He hasn’t pissed anywhere or ripped anything to shreds or otherwise terrorized Danny’s home, which is great, but he's _still under the bed_. He _has_ stuck one enormous paw out, a little curled. The tip of his muzzle is just visible, whiskers twitching.

“So,” says Danny, and then has absolutely no idea what else to say. “I’m gonna...coffee,” he decides. 

Steve just flexes his paw, unsheathing his razor claws lazily, so Danny leaves. 

He’s both pleased and miffed to find that Joe's apparently stayed gone, and only notices the folded paper left behind as he’s taking a sip of the rest of the coffee Joe made (which is actually pretty good, damn him). 

Danny flips it open. In neat block letters, it reads:

>   _As far as I know, Steve only shifts during moments of extreme emotional distress. Or for missions, but that’s classified. Officially, the United States government has no knowledge of the various shifter peoples._

Danny snorts. 

>   _I had a hell of time getting him back to Hawaii as a goddamn jungle cat, I’ll tell you that. We had to sedate him, and he still managed to give me the slip. Sorry about upsetting your kid. I figured he’d go home, not to your place. _

Danny’s gut reaction to this shitty apology is offence— _of course_ Steve came here. But then the coffee seems to hit his brain, and he finds himself wondering about that, ‘cause Steve handles his feelings by hiking or swimming or surfing, not by looking for solace or companionship. _He does all that with_ you _though_ , his traitorous detective brain points out. Danny frowns, turns back to the note. 

> _Steve is still himself, to an extent. Shifters retain their human memories, personalities, and intellectual capacities in their animal forms, unless they shift involuntarily, like Steve has. He'll lose himself if he spends too long as a cat. I figure you’ve got a max of three weeks before it’s been too long. Call Mary, she pulled him out of it last time._

Danny stares at the note, flips it over, but nope, that’s really it, that’s all Joe wrote. Incensed, Danny crumples it, shoves it into the sink disposal, and turns it on. The churning roar of its destruction lightens some of his black mood. 

Danny goes back to his room, where Steve is still under the bed, goddamit, and squats down in front of him. 

“So,” he starts, “Joe says—"

Steve growls. 

“Yeah, I know, he’s an ass and you’re mad at him, I get it. But he said I should call Mary and—”

Danny’s whole entire bed shifts and lifts as Steve surges out from underneath it in a river of black fur. Danny barely has time to draw in a breath to yell before Steve is bearing down on him, really horrifically long canines all up in his face, snarling. Danny just barely keeps from passing out from instinctual fear. His mind knows this is Steve but the rest of him is convinced he’s about to become cat food. 

“Steve,” he says, or mostly squeaks, really, but who’s gonna judge.“I won’t call her, I won’t, will you please _back the fuck up?”_

Steve stops snarling but doesn’t back the fuck up even a little bit. He gets closer instead, and Danny closes his eyes and whimpers, because...because Steve has poked his cold sorta wet nose into the hollow of his throat and is making really weird noises, actually. 

Danny eventually figures out what the sounds are when the clamour of _death death you’re gonna die!_  in his head lowers to manageable levels. 

Steve is...crying. In a cat way. Making these hitched breath, whuffle-growl-whine sound right up against Danny’s jugular, and it is _the worst_. 

It doesn’t even occur to Danny to not touch him—his hands are already coming up and smoothing through the silky fur of Steve’s heaving ribs, up over his back, in a weird approximation of a hug. Steve sort of shudders and flattens down on him, which is gonna be real uncomfortable in a minute when Danny can’t breathe, but right now he ignores all that and holds him, sort of pets him, because fur is irresistible and Danny is tactile and Steve is crying. And you don’t just let someone cry on you and not do anything about it. Even when they're in cat shape.

Steve quiets, after a little bit. 

“I know this sucks, but, you know, I'm here.”

Steve rumbles. It vibrates through Danny, which feels really weird. 

“You’re kinda heavy,” Danny tells him, after a beat, "Sorry." 

Steve lumbers up and off him with a recognizable amount of petulance but keeps his head ducked low, avoiding his gaze in textbook embarrassment behaviour. And Danny had never thought before now that cats were all that expressive—but maybe it’s just Steve. He wouldn’t know, being a dog person himself. (Not literally, though. Christ, he can’t believe he’s gotta modify something like that. The world used to be so simple...and then he met Steve). 

Danny gets off the floor, sits on his bed which is miraculously still in one piece, and Steve follows him up, lays his head on Danny’s lap. Danny can’t quite square away that idea that _Steve McGarrett_ _is cuddling him_ , but maybe in jaguar form he’s more...expressive? Uninhibited? Something. It’s kinda nice, if he’s being honest with himself. 

Danny strokes his head, his ears, marvelling at all of this, before he reaches for his phone. 

Steve yowls. 

“Relax, ya schmuck. I’m checking on Grace.”

Steve hunches, noses at Danny’s belly apologetically. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you goof— _Hey_ Chin, how’s everything?”

“It’s good brah,” says Chin, “Kono came by. They’re going swimming. And before you say anything, Kono’s keeping an eye on her the entire time and she’ll be wearing a life jacket. Also, there aren’t even any swells where they’re going.”

Danny grumbles, but, “Yeah, ok. Lemme talk to her?”

“Danno! How’s Uncle Steve?”

“Still a cat,” says Danny, “You doing ok, monkey?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna swim! Kono’s taking me and Chin is gonna get us shave ice and sun bathe.”

“Sounds awesome,” says Danny a little wistfully. He wouldn’t have minded a little sunbathing himself. “Think Steve would let me put a leash on him so I could come with you?”

Grace’s snort of laughter is overwhelmed by Steve growling, but not seriously. None of his teeth even show. Danny shoots him an amused look, says _stay safe_ and _Danno loves you_ , and hangs up. 

“You gonna change back anytime soon, then? I got questions, man, and decoding your sounds are a little above my pay grade.”

In answer, Steve melts off his lap and slinks under the bed again. 

Danny sighs. This is gonna be a long-ass day.

At some point, he drifts off while googling, for lack of any other options, shifters. (He ignored anything not rooted in anthropological, historically based mythology, because he figured it's gotta be more sound than anything else, especially after he stumbled upon some truly terrifying cartoon porn he was gonna have to bleach outta his brain later). 

He hadn’t gotten far, because it turns out that waking up at the crack of dawn in fear for you and your daughter’s lives really takes it out of a guy, and he hasn’t really been sleeping well with Steve out of the country (listen, every time Steve leaves he ends up almost dying and Danny ends up surrounded by real life G.I. Joes and trying to stop him from bleeding, so forgive him his insomnia), so...he falls asleep. 

And when he wakes, his house is being broken into, again. 

Danny reaches for a gun that’s not there, because he left it in the car, and finds Steve prowling out from under the bed. 

“Steve,” he hisses. 

Steve ignores him, lopes out of the room silently. Danny has no choice but to follow him. 

There are three men in Danny’s living room, wearing ski masks even though it's _Hawaii_ and holding semi-automatics. One turns just in time to see Steve, opens his mouth to yell, and then all hell breaks loose. 

Steve launches himself in a black blur at the closest one, who falls with a scream, his gun going off as he goes down. Danny watches, in mixed fear and horror, as they try to shoot at Steve and in the process riddle his house with bullets, wants to do something, to help, but he’s got no weapons and—and before he knows it, Steve’s got his muzzle on the second shooter, and with a _crunch_ and a savage shake of his head, breaks the man's neck. 

It’s gonna haunt Danny for the rest of his life, that sound. 

The one remaining shooter is not screaming, not even moving, just staring at Steve, at his companions, who are bleeding all over the place, his gun lax in his hand. Steve turns on him, slowly, and Danny is pretty sure the guy pees himself. 

“Steve,” he whispers. One of Steve’s ears twitches toward him but he doesn’t stop advancing, every muscle in his powerful body coiled to spring. 

“We need one of them alive, Steve. We need to take _statements_ , we gotta find out—”

The shooter seems to notice Danny at that point, and does the stupidest thing he could’ve done. 

He tries to take a shot at him, instead of the murderous predator half a foot away. He doesn’t even get to lift the gun high enough before Steve’s torn into him with a tooth-rattling roar.

The silent aftermath of the bloodbath rings in Danny’s ears. Steve is covered in blood, his house is covered in blood, and Danny is very honestly afraid he might throw up. He pulls himself together, because he’s a cop, he's seen—not this, but still some pretty terrible shit. Steve is panting over the last man and looks about an inch away from _eating him,_ which is such a horrendous thought that Danny actually does swallow down bile, because _god_ , Steve might _eat a person_ and Danny might not be able to _stop_ _him_ , because Steve is a  _jaguar_. 

“Steve.”

Steve swings his head around, low and heavy.

“Can you turn back now, please?”

And just like Mary’s did in the video from this morning, from what might as well have been years ago, Danny’s voice breaks. “Please,” he asks again. 

Seeing Steve shift in real time makes him feel more ill than anything else so far. His brain can’t quite catalogue what’s happening; Steve the jaguar warps, melts, _mists_ into Steve the human who is very naked and has blood all over his mouth and his chest and _everywhere_. He rises leisurely from his crouch and spits something Danny determinedly doesn’t look at out of the side of his mouth. His eyes are dark.

And for all that he's himself again, Danny looks at him and still sees _jaguar_ , and it scares him, scares him right down to the centre of himself—because, just for a second, Danny’s not sure Steve’s _actually_ _back_. 

Then he says, “Danno,” softly, and sways, and again Danny doesn’t think before he moves to him, tucks himself under Steve’s shoulder and holds him up, gore be damned. 

“Come on,” says Danny, “Come on.”

He can hear, in the distance, sirens. 


End file.
